Various types of imaging systems are available for imaging the surface and/or the interior of such diverse entities such as, for example, the human anatomy, animals, man-made physical structures such as welding joints in bridges, geological formations, bodies of water, as well as many others. For example, in the field of dentistry, various types of intra-oral sensors exist which are used for capturing images of the inside of teeth and surrounding anatomy (e.g., bone structure) by exposing the anatomy and sensors to X-ray radiation. Such imaging techniques are well known using such intra-oral sensors as, for example, X-ray sensitive film, X-ray sensitive phosphor plates, or X-ray sensitive digital sensors such as a corded charge-coupled device (CCD) sensor, for example.
When capturing an image, sometimes the sensor may fail. For example, if the sensor is a film, the film may have gone bad due to age, been damaged somehow, or may have been prematurely exposed for some reason. If the sensor is a phosphor plate, the plate may have been damaged or the plate may not have been properly erased after a previous exposure. If the sensor is a corded digital CCD sensor, the system to which the sensor is connected may fault, thus failing to extract the image information from the CCD sensor. Other mechanisms of failure are possible as well with respect to properly capturing and storing an image.
Such failures or faults may result in the operator (e.g., an imaging technician or physician) having to go back and re-expose the patient in order to attempt to capture a proper image of the desired anatomy. Furthermore, if the operator does not immediately realize that a failure has occurred, an image of a particular desired anatomy may not be acquired at all during a scanning session, resulting in inadequate information being provided to the physician.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional, traditional, and proposed approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems and methods with the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.